Work begins to stop Cradle of Humankind sewage leaks
● Long overdue efforts are now under way to repair Mogale City’s disintegrating sewerage system, which has polluted the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in Gauteng for years.
Munsieville pump station, one of the main culprits leaking raw sewage into the area’s waterways and groundwater, was handed over to a contractor on Thursday. Mogale City spokesperson Adrian Amod said it was one of four pump stations that would be refurbished this financial year.
“With [the] Munsieville site handover, the service provider will immediately commence work on these critical components while negotiations for all other minor items are ongoing,” he said.
“With the above prioritised areas of work done, the pump station will function optimally, [which will] see an end to sewage spillage from the Munsieville side into Percy Stewart [water treatment plant] and the Blaaubankspruit, [and] ... the Cradle of Humankind.”
Amod said, apart from Munsieville, the municipality had allocated R7.5m in the 2023/2024 financial year to end-June for repairs and maintenance to other pump stations.
“These are Muldersdrift — Rietfontein Village and eThembalethu, as well as Magaliesburg — [and] GaMohale,” Amod said.
It has taken years for the work to commence. “While the municipality acknowledges the urgency of the project, rigorous project management and [commitment] to cost-containment have led to necessary delays. These delays were primarily due to extensive negotiations between the municipality and the appointed service provider to ensure that proposed rates aligned with market-related pricing.
“This approach not only demonstrates the municipality’s commitment to stringent contract management, but also guarantees value for money for both the municipality and its ratepayers,” Amod said.
He said the municipality had been “dogged by historic lack of maintenance from previously contracted service providers, lax project management oversight and infrastructure vandalism”.
Vandalism had, for example, in April affected the Percy Stewart water treatment plant next to the Blaaubankspruit. The Sunday Times visited the plant and found it devoid of activity and overgrown with weeds. Its aerators were also not running.
“The treatment plant is about 60% operational and a lot of work has been done in replacing screens, pumps and other equipment. There was a slight improvement on the water quality from Percy Stewart between late last year and just before the recent vandalism, when tests were done again,” said Amod. “A lot of work is still in progress.”
A few hundred metres from the plant, a dead river flows. Grey foul-smelling water and bubbling — not from air, but as a result of a chemical reaction caused by spilt sewage — runs through the green landscape.
Resident Trevor Brough has been fighting for a working sewerage system since 2019.
“What you see here is a river in a nature reserve that no longer holds any life except for harmful bacteria,” he said on the banks of the Blaaubankspruit.
“A formal complaint was lodged with Mogale municipality about the pollution in the Cradle rivers in July 2019. During July/August 2019, the community did some investigations to determine the source of problem, which was [traced] to Percy Stewart.”
In August 2019, the community had a meeting with Mogale City’s utility management services.
“At the time, a number of water samples were taken and analysed by a laboratory, which confirmed the level of pollution and the source. This was done in 2019, and again in 2020,” he said.
“We had a company, African Environmental Development, analyse the results and give us a professional opinion report on the 2019 samples. This report confirmed our visual findings in the field.”
There was no life in the Blaaubankspruit.
He said a complaint was lodged with the department of environmental affairs in July 2020, and another in August 2021 with the South African Human Rights Commission.
“In August 2023, the special rapporteur from the UN Human Rights Commission did an inspection tour of South Africa. A submission was made to him regarding the pollution within the Cradle of Humankind,” said Brough.
CEO of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment Mariette Liefferink accompanied the Sunday Times to another hotspot.
“The government built a new affordable housing project, Brickvale, near here. You can see there is a pump station, but it isn’t even connected to Eskom power. Yet there are already people living in Brickvale. Mogale’s solution? They blocked the sewerage line before it reaches the pump station and simply used earthmoving machinery to dig a hole into which the raw sewage now flows,” she said.
“They sometimes send honeysuckers to empty the hole, but guess where they dump the truck’s contents? At the Percy Stewart water treatment centre, so this ... sewage also ends up in the Blaaubankspruit.”
Businessman Fred Daniel purchased a smallholding in the heart of the Cradle for R18m in May 2019.
“We started a lovely little trout-breeding business on the property to supply restaurants and so on. It went well until we realised we were pretty much supplying them with E coli.
“Now our dams are empty of life. There is only dirty water and about half a metre’s worth of sewage in it. Even the goldfish in our dams have died, and they are incredibly hardy creatures,” said Daniel.
Four years ago, the property was lush with gurgling streams and birdsong but there was only a deathly silence there on Friday.